Paying for groceries online shop - new arrivals in NL

Hi and welcome to the Forum.

Your forum information tells us you're Irish citizens; if you're travelling from Ireland, there is no need to quarantine when you arrive in the Netherlands (link).  Also, Brexit will not stop you from bringing Irish sourced meat & dairy products provided you bought them in Ireland.

If in fact, you're travelling from the UK, then you will have to quarantine.  The issue you will have is that you can't open a bank account until you have your BSN number from the Gemeente when you register, neither can you register with a doctor, or get health insurance, register your car (so get car insurance).  You will not be able to register while in quarantine; have you considered postponing this trip unit after Covid restrictions make this a bit more doable?  Although Dutch bank cards seem to work fine in the UK for card payments, I've never tried it the other way around.  I know they didn't use to work, perhaps someone else knows for sure.

Hope this helps.

Cynic
Expat Team

I'm an Irish citizen but through my father, and I was born in England, where we currently live. My wife isn't Irish, but she has a job starting on first July in Hoofddorp, and her company has made the necessary arrangements for our moving, living  and working in the Netherlands.

We're also selling our house in the UK the same week we move so delaying isn't really an easy option!

As long as we can pay for our groceries that first week or so, everything will be fine. Wife's work is going to help us get bank account setup, registration, healthcare etc, but, as you say, we can't really progress any of that until we arrive in the country.

We knew we could set up an online shopping account and anticipated using this to get us fed until we could leave the house, and if we can pay for it (somehow!) this will still work. It's not until we tried it in a practice run today that we realised there'd be an issue with the payment.

I'm sure there will be many more challenges ahead and I'm also sure there will be a solution to this one. We do have friends living close(ish) to where we're staying so as a last resort we might be able to get them to pay from their account on our behalf. I'd just rather not ask them unless we have to so I thought I'd ask for advice here first.

I expect not many others are choosing to move countries during a pandemic, so maybe nobody knows the answer!

There seems to be a hint of a solution shown on the AH website: https://www.ah.nl/klantenservice/online … en/betalen

It does mention that ApplePay is available to pay for groceries, and my wife already uses it, so hopefully this is a possible way forward.

I suppose my next question is: does anyone know if using ApplePay will bypass the fact that our bank accounts (at time of arrival) will still be in the UK?

I have just tweeted AH with this question (the best I could manage with my early-stage Dutch!) so if they reply I'll post it here in case it's useful for others in a similar situation.

Hi again.

I think that (Apple Pay) will work.  The only thing to watch out for is what exchange rate you get at the time of the transaction and whether they charge for currency and probably more important, what the single transaction limit may be.

I just checked out your link, it says they will take a bank debit card from the Maestro group, having just checked my UK cards, they're all Visa or Link.

The only other potential is that you can't order items where the total amount is not known, i.e. you can't order 5 potatoes because they won't know the weight at the time you purchase/pay.

Just thought of one further thing - Albert Hijn are expensive, you will soon realise that you can buy the same stuff much cheaper elsewhere.  That said, we used to use it for convenience.

Ah yes, we did find it a bit more expensive, but there are only a few options we could find where they'd deliver to the area we are going to stay for the first 6 weeks. We're really only using this to get us through the first ten days or so until we can leave the house and get the rest of our new lives registered, sorted and applied for.

As soon as we're able to leave the house we'll be looking for a more permanent residence, and once we have NL bank accounts and can move around a bit more freely, our options will open up.

Thanks for your advice - I'll post back whatever I find out from AH (and then again later when we found out what worked!!)

Without wishing to encourage you to disobey the rules.  You haven't said where you're going to live (and you don't have to).  My daughter lives in the East, you may be surprised at the amount of locked-down Germans who are regularly getting lost and finding themselves in Holland where they just happen to find a shop open that has the vital stuff they need.

Hi,

You could try Jumbo that is also a big chain in The Netherlands that delivers groceries. You can pay with a credit card.

I was baffled why food purchase could be a problem until I saw the AH link. Your payment problem is simply because AH will not fix the price at point of purchase. However NL is now awash with food delivery options which will allow payment by creditcard. Even my daily paper (NRC) supplies high quality meal packs and many restaurants  and catering services now deliver to your door. It may cost you a bit more but will avoid the stress. If you insist on using AH, there are voluntary organisations who will shop there for you and collect cash at your door.

Hundreds are arriving here for quarantine every day and I suspect many people simply ignore the rules and go out to shop. Unlike the UK, fines are not draconian and the chance of being spotted is negligible. Also, unlike most working age people here, you are double vaccinated and pose little risk to the rest of us.

Although off topic, make sure your UK bank accounts remain linked to a UK address. Brexit means that Dutch residents can no longer (with rare exceptions) hold UK bank accounts.

Thanks Ramses, I've just had a look and I agree - it seems that Jumbo are the safer option as they do offer both Apple Pay and credit card. Makes me feel a lot happier!

Thanks to both you and Cynic for your advice. We have a couple of options now.

Henry McGrath wrote:

I was baffled why food purchase could be a problem until I saw the AH link. Your payment problem is simply because AH will not fix the price at point of purchase. However NL is now awash with food delivery options which will allow payment by creditcard. Even my daily paper (NRC) supplies high quality meal packs and many restaurants  and catering services now deliver to your door. It may cost you a bit more but will avoid the stress. If you insist on using AH, there are voluntary organisations who will shop there for you and collect cash at your door.

Hundreds are arriving here for quarantine every day and I suspect many people simply ignore the rules and go out to shop. Unlike the UK, fines are not draconian and the chance of being spotted is negligible. Also, unlike most working age people here, you are double vaccinated and pose little risk to the rest of us.

Although off topic, make sure your UK bank accounts remain linked to a UK address. Brexit means that Dutch residents can no longer (with rare exceptions) hold UK bank accounts.

You're right - we started looking and tried a couple of others (Picnic was one, can't remember the other one) who weren't delivering to the area we're staying in, and AH was just the first one which covered the address. Then got to the end of the order process and saw we couldn't pay immediately so started digging further and discovered the no credit card/no foreign bank account stipulation so it all got a bit worrying.

I also get what you and Cynic are saying about others going out to shop when they should quarantine (even as a last resort) but wanted to avoid getting in any trouble, or even just upsetting our new neighbours, on day one of what we hope is years of living in NL! Our only vehicle is going to still have UK plates so we'd be pretty noticeable if we did leave the house.

The UK address is also good advice - I have already spoken to my bank and they have no restriction on how long I can be "visiting" NL and using the account, as long as it still has a UK address attached to it, which it will do even after we move. So hopefully that should be OK.

Yes you can also order groceries from Picnic but only via app and there is a waiting time for new customers. They are the cheapest option and they deliver for free.
Plus is another supermarket that delivers. Those are the biggest chains in the Netherlands.

For ordering meals use Thuisbezorgd (TakeAway in the UK) they are the biggest or use UberEats.
We Dutch order almost everything online 

Thought I'd just update this post to say that Jumbo delivered on all counts. 

Arrived in NL on Friday morning, and had a delivery booked with Jumbo for Saturday afternoon, to give us room to make changes in case of problems - and it was lucky that we did it this way. Our Airbnb host had stopped responding to messages in the last couple of days before our booking started, and when we arrived at the house it was clear that it was in no condition to receive guests (and we couldn't get in even if we'd wanted to!) We had to find somewhere else very quickly. Airbnb support were helpful in achieving this.

The Jumbo app allows changes up to the day before delivery, so I postponed the delivery date to give us a bit of time, then found a new place to stay.

Once we'd secured a new Airbnb, I logged into the Jumbo app and was able to change the delivery address to our new location. Our host arranged for some basic essentials so we didn't go hungry the first night.

The Jumbo groceries delivery arrived yesterday afternoon, and we were able to pay with our MasterCard without any issues. We're now continuing our quarantine until Wednesday, when we've got a Covid test booked. If we get an all clear on that we'll be released from quarantine early.

One thing that concerned us (slightly off topic) was that our quarantine declaration forms now don't show the correct address, and there seems to be no way of contacting anyone to update this. My wife received a phone call yesterday (from the BOA?) to check how our quarantine was going, and he didn't seem too bothered that our address was different; the call was more to make sure we had access to groceries and any medical help we might need.

Anyway, we arrived, Jumbo has two new customers, and in a few days we will be able to start looking for our new home in the Netherlands.

eamonexpat wrote:

Thought I'd just update this post to say that Jumbo delivered on all counts.

Thanks for the update.

Hartelijk welkom in Nederland

Cynic
Expat Team

Thank you so much for posting this update - exactly the info I need ahead of my quarantine next week.

I hope you don't mind me asking - what was the process like for booking test to release, as I assume you don't have a BSN number yet? Thank you.

DaveG87 wrote:

I hope you don't mind me asking - what was the process like for booking test to release, as I assume you don't have a BSN number yet? Thank you.

I think you need to either book an appointment with GGD, or find/pay for a private test.

We didn't have a BSN number at the time, but a few days after arriving in NL someone phoned to check how we were getting on in our quarantine, and that we had our groceries and medication needs covered.

During this phone call they gave us a phone number to call and book a test. I don't have the number to hand (my wife received the call and she's at work now) but I'll see if I can find it.

Hi - the phone number was:  31(0)8001202

That was where we booked the PCR test a few days after we arrived in the Netherlands. As mentioned above, someone did phone us first (maybe two days after we arrived) to check how our quarantine was going and offered us the option to test early rather than waiting the full ten days.

Obviously, the situation might have changed since we arrived, but if you don’t hear from anyone after three or four days it might be worth giving them a call and seeing if you can book the test.

Hope that’s useful.